Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition + G-Panel review - Introduction

Palit GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition + G-Panel
“Do ya feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk”

Palit joins in with a review as well, they released their GameRock series in several flavors, we test the GTX 1080 version with G-Panel (a breakout box that allows GPU monitoring). The product looks totally different opposed to what you are used too in a black and white coating. Don't let the looks fool you though as this card runs very fast, in fact it is the fastest tested to date. It is armed with an all custom design including a dual-fan triple slot cooler and a very hefty factory tweak as this card is boosting at close to 2 GHz all the time. Oh and yes, it has an RGB LED lighting as well. Team up with us and check out that 8 GB Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition + G-Panel.

The GPU industry has been on hold, waiting for a smaller GPU fabrication process to become viable. Last generation GPUs were based on a 28 nm fabrication, an intermediate move to 20 nm was supposed to be the answer for today’s GPUs, but it was a problematic technology. Aside from some smaller ASICs the 20 nm node has been a fail. Therefore the industry had to wait until an ever newer and smaller fabrication process was available in order to shrink the die which allows for less voltage usage in the chips, less transistor gate leakage and, obviously, more transistors in a GPU. The answer was to be found in the recent 14/15/16 nm fabrication processors and processes with the now all too familiar FinFET + VLSI technology (basically wings on a transistor). Intel has been using it for a while, and now both Nvidia and AMD are moving towards such nodes as well. Nvidia is the first to announce their new products based on a TSMC 16 nm process fab by introducing Pascal GPU architecture, named after the mathematician much like Kepler, Maxwell and Fermi. That stage has now passed, the GeForce GTX 1070 and 1080 have been announced with the 1070 and 1080 cards slowly becoming available in stores as we speak. Both models are equally impressive in its product positioning, though I do feel the 1070 will be the more attractive product due to its price level, the 1080 cards really is what everybody want (but perhaps can't afford). The good news though is that the board partner cards will offer SKUs for less opposed to the Nvidia reference / Founder edition cards. Obviously the higher-end all customized SKUs will likely level with that founders edition card price level again, but I am pretty certain you'd rather spend your money on a fully customized AIB card that is already factory tweaked a bit opposed the the reference one. 

It's 1080 review number five already and this round goes to Palit who definitely offers something different. First off, the GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition is the fastest puppy on the block. Thanks to a base clock of 1746MHz with a boost clock : 1885 MHz and a little extra tweaking in terms of an increased power limiter we actually notice this card hovering close to 2 GHz on that boost clock. Next to that, Palit is the first to offer tweaked memory, this bad boy clocks in at an effective 10500MHz on that snazzy Micron GDDR5X graphics memory. The magic combo combined does make this the fastest 1080 we've had out hands on to date. 

The board itself is based on a custom power supply with 8 GPU and 2 memory power phases, the PCB is dark, the shielding is white, which would look great with white chassis and motherboard PCBs, a little less in dark designs though we admit. The Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium comes with a massive two-fan triple slot cooler. It's huge alright, but it does keep that Pascal GP104-400 GPU cooled at roughly 70 Degrees C whilst remaining whisper silent, as the Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium is the most silent card we tested as well. Much like all premium graphics cards (aside from the founders edition) that we tested up-to 50 Degrees C the card will even stay in passive mode, e.g. the fans will not spin. An just like all other vendors, Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium cooler is also fitted with a configurable RGB LED system that lights up both the front and top side in a very tasteful manner. The Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium has been fitted with both a 6-pin and 8-pin power connector and at the backside you'll find a matte black solid back-plate. As stated in the introduction, there are two SKUs of the Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium, one comes with a G-Panel which actually is pretty cool. We'll take a closer look at that in the photo-shoot of course. Let's head on-wards in the review. We'll start with a product overview in the photo-shoot.

Palit GeForce GTX 1080 GameRock Premium Edition + G-Panel - Base Clock : 1746MHz / Boost Clock : 1885MHz - GDDR5X effective 10500MHz